


Hurts Like Hell

by SHADOWSQUILL



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Cyberman, Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, F/M, Major character death - Freeform, Ozymandias - Freeform, Percy Shelley - Freeform, Sort Of, cybermaster, the master gets his revenge, victorious Master, yaz gets heartbroken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26028640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHADOWSQUILL/pseuds/SHADOWSQUILL
Summary: What if the Master had gotten another kind of revenge on the Doctor?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Hurts Like Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea a few months ago. It took me that much time to get to it and complete it. _Hurts Like Hell_ was a challenge I've given myself and was thought to be done under the form of comics... and it has been done as comics before I wrote this one-shot for the story to be deeper and more complete. You can find it on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/shadowsquillproductions/).

Yaz couldn’t believe what she had right under her eyes. This ‘fixing the mess I’ve created in step one’ adventure wasn’t giving them the time to breathe. They hadn’t had a break ever since they visited Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and friends to assist to the birth of one of ‘the most gruesome, spine chilling ghost story of all time’ – to quote the Doctor’s own words when she tried to convince the dispersed gathering of brilliant minds to concentrate while light regularly pulsed across the low grey sky, while rain hammered down confining them all in the bloodcurdling haunted villa Diotati. Well, haunted. Big word for a place stuck in a perception filter and full of ghosts that weren’t ghosts – unless they were? – and with a half human, half robot that happened to be the lone Cyberman Captain Jack Harkness had told them about.

Of course the Doctor wouldn’t risk causing the destruction of her beloved Earth and she had disregarded Jack’s warning to save the humanity… ignoring – or convinced that she could fix it – that it would create a real mess leading to the ascension of the Cybermen race and the quasi-extinction of the human race. The total contrary of what the Doctor had tried to do in the first place. If it was the only thing that had gone wrong. They had fought the Cybermen from the nineteenth century until far in the future. Their only hope had taken the form of a legendary boundary leading to another part of the universe where humanity would be saved and able to recreate itself with the few survivors left. What a disillusion. A whole trap meticulously set to drive the Doctor right where the devilish mind had planned her to go.

The Boundary was actually a portal, and another world had appeared beyond: a landscape of golden light, of orange skies and purple grass. It was so bright they all had had to shield their eyes. The Doctor was as confused as horrified to discover that it was her home planet Gallifrey, and hadn’t had the time to pull herself back together before the Master jumped through and blackmailed her into following him through the portal for a life-changing adventure among the ruins of Gallifrey. A drop too much for the Doctor who became a prisoner of the man who had once been her best friend in a distant past. How the Doctor, the kind, eccentric, caring Doctor they knew could have been friends with such a despicable being who enjoyed chaos and lived for nothing else but to create it and annoy the only person who could bear him?

This had been a shock for Yaz. She had arrived after her friend – her special person – walked through the Boundary with their enemy. And now everything was falling back into place. These past few months, the Doctor had been distant with them, more than in the first few months they had been travelling together. The usual bundle of joy and hope and energy had been brooding, had been moody, angry, sarcastic. A side of the Doctor they had never seen before the Master came into their lives. She had told them that she was often going home, on her own. And all these times, she had been standing on the steaming ruins of what had once been her home. No wonder why she wasn’t ‘herself’ – the self they had known – and why she had always refused to take them to their home. Another time she said. Another time, because the planet was only ruins. This town and its surroundings were anyway.

Yaz hadn’t waited for the others. Her instinct had dictated her to run through the desert of reddish sand straight to the Citadel where she was sure to find the Doctor. She didn’t look if the others were following and she honestly didn’t care like she didn’t care if she was running straight into the danger’s arms. And maybe she was, but her legs came to a halt when the second wave of shock washed through her. There was a lone Cyberman standing in a ruined chamber covered in dust and rubble. The destruction was fresh, felt fresh and smoke was still floating around. The ceiling was incredibly high and ripped open with a massive hole through which the light was flowing in the room. It must have been beautiful and grand in the past. Not anymore. Was it the Master? Was it him and his madness who destroyed this once beautiful planet?

The Cyberman was on a sort of round podium. She should be careful, but something was attracting her like a magnet toward the ‘evolved human’. It wasn’t like any of the other Cybermen she had met in the last few hours. It was different, physically, and there was something about it. Something _familiar_. There weren’t handles on the sides of the head. Instead it was replaced by a stylised fan with delicately cut circular symbols that were similar to the symbols inside the TARDIS. Symbols that were continuing on the emotionless mask of steel staring at her through holes in the shape of teary eyes. A teary eyes shape and an upside-down smile for a being without any emotion. What an irony. Yet, what caught Yaz’s attention was the outfit: it was wearing a coat. A coat Yaz would have recognised anywhere: it was the Doctor’s.

She prudently approached the robot, circled around it to have a full view, to understand what was going on there. She was alone there, alone with this monster. The others were nowhere near them. She couldn’t hear footsteps or voices. They had to find their way through the ruins of the city. Graham and Ryan would come. They were the Doctor’s friends. But for Yaz, the Doctor was more than a traveller, more than a friend. The Time Lord would never know; the Time Lord certainly wasn’t sharing these thoughts. However, if they all survived this crazy adventure, Yaz wouldn’t be able to hold back all of them in her heart any longer. It was obvious for everyone but the main concerned person. How could someone be so oblivious? Or she maybe wasn’t? Maybe she was perfectly aware and preferred playing dumb? When you got to live this long, what was a human life?

The Cyberman came out of its standby mode to the sound of her footsteps. It raised its head, turned its supposedly blind eyes toward her. Yaz froze, expected an attack. Cybermen were programmed to attack humans on sight and upgrade them to the next stage of the so-called evolution. It cocked its head on the side. The light on its head and chest shone of a bright blue. The creature inside was alive. Converted into a monster. Dressed into a steel disguise. Forcefully connected to a shared neutral network. How painful that must be. The poor human must have gone through hell. But it was no time to think of that. This Cyberman could kill her at any time – why was it so still? – and the once human being was no more. It had been sacrificed on the altar of yet another war between species who could just have cohabited if it were simpler.

“Yaz…”

Yaz yelped at the sound of the cold emotionless metallic voice she had yet expected. The creature was alive and knew her name. Her nickname. The one all her friends and family used. Her body stiffened, a cold shiver ran down her spine, her heart fell in her chest as if it had been ballasted with a heavy stone and her stomach was turned upside down. The Cyberman knew her name, had been **_waiting_** for her – and probably the rest of the fam – to come here and find it. This could be no coincidence and the mere idea made her sick to the core. She parted her lips but no sound came out for a few seconds and when her vocal cords finally entered into action, it was to mouth the one and only name in her mind and also a question which answer she was dreading.

“Doctor?”

Hope was whispering in her mind that it couldn’t be the Doctor, that the strong woman who had taken them out of every other situation, couldn’t have given in and become one of her worst enemy’s tools. A merciless killer for the supremacy of their one and only race. Years, decades, centuries… All of this time passing by and the same insane need for power was always at the centre of the universe.

She refused to believe that this Cyberman could be the Doctor, and she was trying to fool herself. What her heart was denying, her mind had already understood and registered the information… accepting it wouldn’t be possible. She tried to convince herself that it was a trick from the Master, that he was playing with their – her -nerves. He desired the Doctor’s attention, all of it, for him alone. He was ready to kill everyone around him to get his revenge on her… Had he succeeded? Had he achieved his goal to make her suffer, to reduce her to nothing? He was probably the only one who could destroy the woman Yaz loved.

The voice was metallic, robotic, emotionless. That was the voice of all the Cybermen they had met so far. There was something different about this one though. There had been an indistinct emotion in the way it had pronounced her name. There was a hint of regret, of pain, of sadness behind the bland mask. The coat, her name, the emotion… No. She refused this thought, refused this idea.

“I have to apologise.”

No Cyberman would apologise, and certainly not to her. Bile ran up her throat but she swallowed it back with all the acidity of realisation of what was happening before her eyes. Her face was divided between shock, pain and disbelief.

“I have failed you, Yasmin Khan.”

Her heart was ripped from her chest, crushed, fixed and put back in her chest… only for it to be stabbed with the burning knives of rage, disgust, incomprehension and grief. Tears shimmered in the corner of her eyes, her bottom lip was quivering, and she was still hanging to the tiny hope that she could be wrong.

“You can’t be…”

_I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.”_

“Do you like my work?”

The mocking voice that rose behind her almost startled her, although she had expected to hear it. It could only be _him_. The Master. Exulting to have successfully created something horrific. Her nostrils flared as she turned to face him. He was standing there, partly hiding in the shadows thrown by the ruins of the place he had destroyed. She almost threw herself at him, hands like claws out to strangle him and tear this proudly devilish smile from his face. She faced him with all her anger written in her body language: planted wide leg, high chin and upper lip drawn back.

“What have you done to her?”

She was trembling, holding back all this anger that only wanted to be released, that wanted to annihilate him and make him pay the highest price of all for daring touching the kindest woman around. He would not leave this place unharmed. She wouldn’t let him. And his laugh was only infuriating her more.

“There was something wrong about the face.” He gestured to his own face with his fingers to illustrate the argument. “I did what I had to do. I’ve gotten my revenge at the same time.” His smile faded away and his face took that severe pout before breaking into a smile again. “This time, **_I_** am the winner.”

He had fully converted the Doctor into a Cyberman who would obey his every desire. He had all control over her. She belonged to him and she was under his control. Forever. His decision had been not to turn her emotions off yet. He had needed her to keep her humanity until she could say goodbye. He wasn’t that much of a monster after all.

_Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains, Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, my idea does end here. It was meant to be this short and this sad. BUT! When I posted the cover I made for the short comics, I've thought that it might be fun if YOU were inventing the next part. How would you imagine the sequel? How would you save the Doctor? And Yaz?


End file.
